Stephen D. Crocker was born on October 15, 1944. He is an American who helped create the internet. In 1969, he started the ARPA "Network Working Group" and the Request for Comments series. From 2011 to 2017, he was the leader of the board for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Education
Steve Crocker went to Van Nuys High School, as did Vint Cerf and Jon Postel. Crocker earned his bachelor's degree in 1968 and his PhD in 1977 from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Career
As a graduate student at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the 1960s, he worked with others to create the rules for the ARPANET, which became the basis for today's Internet. He said, "Although much of the development followed a detailed plan, the design of the rules and the creation of the RFCs happened mostly by chance." He helped start the Network Working Group (NWG) in 1969 and was the person who began the Request for Comment (RFC) series, writing the first RFC and many others. Crocker guided other graduate students, including Jon Postel and Vint Cerf, in creating a protocol called the Network Control Program (NCP). They planned to use separate tools, Telnet and the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), to perform tasks on the ARPANET. NCP defined how computers connected to the ARPANET, making it easier to join the network and allowing more locations to participate.
He started the International Network Working Group (INWG) in 1972, and later his focus shifted to artificial intelligence. He was recognized by Cerf and Kahn in their important 1974 paper about connecting different networks.
While at UCLA, Crocker taught a course on computer programming for the IBM 7094 mainframe computer. The class aimed to teach high school teachers about digital processing and assembly language so they could teach these topics in their schools. Some high school students also joined the course to learn about this new field. Crocker was also involved in the newly created UCLA Computer Club.
Crocker worked as a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a senior researcher at USC's Information Sciences Institute, founder and director of the Computer Science Laboratory at The Aerospace Corporation, and a vice president at Trusted Information Systems. In 1994, he helped start CyberCash, Inc., and was its chief technology officer. In 1998, he founded and managed Executive DSL, a DSL-based Internet service provider. In 1999, he co-founded and led Longitude Systems. He is currently the CEO of Shinkuro, a research and development company.
The Network Working Group's RFCs provided the foundation for the creation of the IETF in 1986. He has served as an IETF security area director, a member of the Internet Architecture Board, chair of the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee, a board member and chairman of ICANN, a board member of the Internet Society, and held many other volunteer roles related to the Internet.
Awards
He has been part of the Internet community since it started. For his work on the Internet, Crocker received the 2002 IEEE Internet Award. In 2012, Crocker was honored in the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society.
On November 6, 2024, Dr. Crocker was given the Jonathan B. Postel Award during the 121th IETF meeting in Dublin, Ireland. He was named an ACM Fellow in the 2024 class of fellows, "for pioneering leadership in the design of the Arpanet Host-Host Protocols and applications."